Speaker Biographies
A big thank you goes to our outstanding speakers for their informative and inspiring workshops!
Dr Claire Hallas
PhD, PgDip CBT, HCPC Registered Practitioner Psychologist |
Claire is a Chartered Psychologist, Registered Practitioner Health Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. She is an owner/ managing partner at SCCH Health Psychology Consulting (www.scchconsulting.com), a business providing health psychology services (e.g. clinical programme/intervention design, training and service evaluation) to a variety of healthcare clients within the pharmaceutical industry, NHS and private healthcare. Claire has extensive experience over the last 15 years within senior consultant health psychology posts in the NHS, research and teaching positions in academia (Staffordshire University, Institute of Psychiatry and Imperial College London) and clinical strategy and management responsibilities in the commercial private healthcare sector. She has consulted for a wide range of public and private sector organisations. She was previously the BPS Division of Health Psychology Chair of the Workforce Planning Committee between 2002-2006 and the DHP Chair of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Taskforce between 2006-2008.
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Ms Sasha Cain
C. Psychol. HCPC Registered Practitioner Psychologist |
Sasha Cain is an Associate Fellow of the BPS and an HCPC registered Consultant Health Psychologist. She has 14 years of NHS experience working in General Psychology, Learning Disabilities and Public Health. This has included extensive experience of working with multi-sector organisations, particularly acute sector, primary care providers, local authority, education and third sector organisations. Her work has included developing services, reviewing and re-configuring services. She has a particular expertise in working with individuals and groups to make and sustain health behaviour change. As she has worked as a provider and strategic commissioner of services including smoking cessation, tobacco control, health trainers and exercise management she has unique understanding of issues facing applied Health Psychologists. She has Chaired the BPS Division of Health Psychology Practitioner Committee, including organising the first two conferences for applied health psychologists and authoring the Stage 2 Interventions Competency. She is also an HCPC Partner Assessor.
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Miss Claire Bourne
BSc, MSc |
Claire Bourne is a fourth year Health Psychology Professional Doctorate student at Staffordshire University. She also works at the Applied Research Centre in Health and Lifestyle Interventions as a senior researcher in the Long-Term Conditions Team. Her main areas of interest are in the self-management of long-term conditions, more specifically developing, implementing and evaluating self-management programmes for people in the early stages of dementia and cancer survivors. She is also currently working on developing a training intervention for health professionals working with cancer patients, around raising issues of healthy lifestyle. This work has a strong theoretical, behaviour change underpinning, utilising the Theoretical Domains Framework as a starting point to understand current health professional practice. Claire is also a committee member for the Midlands Health Psychology Network and her current role is CPD event officer and joint local interest group officer.
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Dr Thomas Webb
BA, MSc, PhD |
Thomas Webb is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Health Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He has written four systematic reviews to date on the role of intentions in shaping behaviour change (Psychological Bulletin, 2006), on the impact of Internet-based interventions on health behavior change (Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2010), on the effectiveness of psychological interventions for adults with skin conditions (British Journal of Dermatology, 2012), and on the effectiveness of different strategies for emotion regulation (Psychological Bulletin, 2012). His current research (supported by a grant from the European Research Council) investigates the role of monitoring (and not monitoring) in goal striving. The project proposes that there is an 'ostrich problem' such that people bury their heads in the sand and fail to monitor the relation between their current behaviour and their desired behaviour.
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Dr Lisa Newson
DHPsych, CPsychol, AFBPsS |
Dr Newson is a Registered Health Psychologist and commenced employment at Liverpool John Moores University in Dec 2011. Her work in the university covers teaching on the undergraduate applied psychology course, the MSc Health Psychology course as well as supporting Phd students. As a Health Psychologist, Dr Newson is interested in community health psychology and the experiences of clients attending health interventions. These interests are reflected in her research projects as well as her private practice supporting clients with long-term conditions. Having completed the stage 2 qualification in 2008, Dr Newson is now a stage 2 BPS supervisor supporting trainees to develop their own competencies and portfolio. Previously employed in the NHS, working at a strategic level. Dr Newson has a sound understanding of the opportunities available to both promote and integrate health psychology into healthcare services.
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Dr Paul Millar
DHPsych, CPsychol |
Paul has a private practice in Glasgow as a contract researcher and as a therapeutic health psychologist. He retrained in health psychology followed a lengthy career in town planning and business development. As a planner, he developed an interest in the complexity of the urban environment’s impact on health and researches the assumptions surrounding policy and community interactions in the area of healthy urban environments. Working with community, business and professional people impressed him by how much people do understand that their healthy daily activities are affected by the environments in which they live. Nevertheless, he notes a substantial gap between professional designers’ and scientific understandings of the inter-relationships between environment and health. He believes that the biopsychosocial approach implicit in health psychology provides a useful means to explore the real impact of designed approaches to healthy environments. Paul employs hypnotherapeutic and CBT approaches to personal issues in health.
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Dr Lynn Dunwoody
BSc, PhD, PGCUT, Cpsychol, Registered Health Psychologist |
Dr Lynn Dunwoody is a registered Health Psychologist and has been a lecturer at the University of Ulster since 1996. Her research interests include physical activity in cancer and palliative care, the health benefits of walking, quality of life and benefit finding in chronic illness. Lynn has 6 years experience as a BPS Stage 2 assessor and is currently the Chief Assessor for health psychology and Chair of DHP Training Committee.
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Dr Vera Araujo-Soares
PhD |
Dr Vera Araujo-Soares did her undergraduate and postgraduate training in Health Psychology in Portugal where she worked as a
clinician and a lecturer at the University of Minho. There she taught Health
Psychology for 10 years. Since 2006 she is working in the UK, first in Aberdeen
at the Alliance for Self Care Research and now in Newcastle University, both at
the Institute of Health & Society and at the School of Psychology. Vera
teaches Health Psychology to both undergraduate and postgraduate Psychology and
Medical students. Vera currently supervises 6 PhD students. Her research
programme aims at developing and evaluating interventions for behaviour change
in healthy people and people with chronic illness and pain management. She is
also interested in understanding behaviour change and using/developing theory
underpinning intervention development and evaluation.
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Dr Nick Hulbert-Williams
BSc (Hons), PGCert (FHEA), PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS |
Dr Nick Hulbert-Williams is a Reader in Psychology at the University of Chester. After initial study at the University of Wales, Bangor, Nick completed his PhD on psychological adjustment to cancer diagnosis through Cardiff University, School of Medicine in 2009. He held an academic post at the University of Wolverhampton prior to moving to Chester in 2010. Nick teaches topics in health and clinical psychology, particularly focusing on the psychological impact of illness. He conducts research on a range of topics relevant to health psychology, including attitudes towards organ donation; eating behaviour and weight management; and, quality of life in cardiac illness. His primary research programme, however, focuses on the application of psychology in the cancer setting. He leads the Department’s Psychosocial Oncology Research Group and supervises a growing number of postgraduate research students. Nick is a member of the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Clinical Studies Groups for Primary Care and Psychosocial Oncology, member of the IPOS International Research Committee, editorial board member for the journal Psycho-Oncology, and the current Chair of the British Psychosocial Oncology Society (BPOS).
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Dr Jane Callaghan
BA Hons, PGDip, MSoc Sci, PhD, Cpsychol |
Jane Callaghan is an Associate Professor in Psychology, at the University of Northampton. She has a broad range of research interests, relating to mental health, wellbeing, children and families, and social processes. She is particularly interested in critical issues in mental health and in development. She leads the MSc in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, at the University of Northampton. She is principle investigator for the EC funded project “Understanding Resistance and Agency: Children in Situations of Domestic Violence”, and is leading the evaluation of the Midlands and East Children and Young People Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Project.
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Dr Tony Cassidy
BSc, PhD, CPsychol |
Tony has been involved in health
psychology for over 20 years and is currently Chair of the DHP. His research
currently focuses on child health and wellbeing and he leads a small research
group under the auspices of CHILD (Child Health Initiatives for Life
Development) at the University of Ulster. Their aim is to work with organisations
in the region to develop interventions that promote the health and wellbeing of
vulnerable children.
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Dr Roz Collings
PhD |
Roz Collings is a Chartered
Psychologist and a Fellow of the Royal Statistics Society. Her research
interests span Health, Clinical and Educational Psychology. Roz began teaching
as an undergraduate in 2001 and has held teaching assistant, associate lecturer
and senior lecturer posts since then. Her main area of teaching is research
methods but she has a portfolio of experience not only covering different
topics (Health, Forensic, Cognition, Biological) but also in different
presentations (mentoring, tutorials, seminars, and large lectures). Roz was
involved in the development of the “postgraduates who teach” course at her previous
university and is currently applying to become a senior fellow of the HEA.
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Dr Rose Capdevila
PhD |
Rose Capdevila is a lecturer at the Open University in the UK. Her research and publications focus on the construction and transgression of discursive boundaries around identity – particularly gender and political identities. This has led to an interest in the applications and implications of methodology in psychology and, particularly, an engagement with Q methodology. She has published on the theory and practice of Q methodology in a number of journals, supervised theses and dissertations based on Q and, over the years, run various workshops in this area for postgraduates, undergraduates and professionals.She is currently conducting research into mothering and agency around childhood vaccinations. She is an active member of both the BPS and the APA and has served on a number of committees and sub groups in those organisations. She has recently become co-editor of the journal Feminism & Psychology.
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